Monitoring the usage of software products in a data processing system is often critical to system management. For example, a license management application may be used to verify compliance of software products installed on the system with licenses that have been acquired for their usage. Such licenses may, for example, specify a maximum number of instances of each software product that may be installed.
License management applications generally leverage an inventory tool that may be utilized to discover all instances of software products installed on the system (e.g., by means of unique signatures identifying the software products to be monitored). In this way, the number of instances of each software product may be compared with the number of available licenses to detect any discrepancy, such as for accounting or auditing purposes. Examples of a commercial license management application and a commercial inventory tool are the IBM Tivoli License Compliance Manager (“ITLCM”) and the IBM Tivoli Common Inventory Technology (“CIT”).
Typically, a software product is delivered in a standard stand-alone mode with a complete license. However, the software product may also be delivered in a bundle mode within one or more software bundles for use with other software products. In this case, no individual license is generally required for the software product since it is already included in a global license for the software bundle. Such is the case with middleware programs, which provide specific services in complex software applications. The same software product may also be delivered again stand-alone, but with a special license, such as in a trial mode for a limited period of time.